Paratroopers Test New System for Airdropping Ammo, Kit into Battle

Paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division position the Caster Assisted A-Series Delivery System in the door of a U.S. Air Force C-17 aircraft before deployment onto Sicily Drop Zone on Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Photo: (U.S. Army)
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Military.com26 Feb 2018By Matthew Cox

The 82nd Airborne Division recently tested a new system for airdropping battlefield necessities such as extra ammo and munitions which allows jumpmasters to roll bundles on wheels out the jump door.

The Caster Assisted A-Series Delivery System, or CAADS, creates bundles, weighing up to 500 pounds each, that can roll across the aircraft floor on a plywood platform equipped with six caster wheels and a braking mechanism, according to a recent, Army press release.

Currently, there is no standardized aerial delivery system used by the U.S. military that relies on this "dolly-assisted method," the press release states.

The current door bundle limit without CAADS is two bundles per door per pass over the drop zone, according to the release. Testing has shown that using CAADS can reduce the time it takes to push bundles out the door, so more bundles could be dropped per pass, the release states.

Maj. Gen. Erik Kurilla, commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, wants to be able to deploy three CAADS door bundles per paratroop door, according to the release.

Capt. Matthew P. Carstensen, commander of the 3rd Brigade Combat Team's Headquarters and Headquarters Company, said he liked the simple design of the system.

"The castor's one free axle made the rotation into the door easy, but still kept two axles locked, which maintained control as the container exited the door and entered the slipstream," Cartensen said in a statement.

"I felt that the concern of jarring the container in the doorway was safely mitigated by those locked axles ... Looking at future application, a container of this size and capacity can significantly increase the combat power and lethality delivered onto a hostile drop zone on the first pass."